Sometimes It Hurts To Die
by yas-m
Summary: and sometimes it hurts to stay alive.


A little oneshot set after The End. Update for Not With Anyone is just around the corner.

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><p><strong>Sometimes It Hurts To Die<br>**_ And sometimes it hurts to stay alive_

"Did it hurt?" she asks timidly, breaking the solemn silence.

He stood across the kitchen from her; warm cup of coffee nursing between his hands, shirtless as he enjoyed the warm breeze after the cool shower. The grey shirt of his, which she wore, fell loosely over her smaller frame, but she wore it anyway, a habit she picked up a lifetime ago.

_His shirts always smelled of him._ _Even years after…_

He raises an eyebrow, tearing his gaze away from the black liquid in his hands and looks up at her. But she is not looking back. Instead, her eyes follow a small droplet as it travels the expanse of his bare chest and traces the fading scar on his abdomen.

When he does not answer, she tries again, "did it hurt when you…?" but she cannot bring herself to say the actual word. She never did, not now, not in her life before.

_Died._

He takes a step towards her, closing the gap between them. And when he is standing right in front of her, her shaking fingers trace over where the drop of water left a glistening line. She still won't look at him when she speaks again, "Hurley said they found you in the bamboo grove… that you had bled out."

_Hurley had cried as he told her (because she forced him to tell her), but she hadn't, not in while Hurley told the story. _

_She cried for days after that._

_She had been crying for a year before that too._

"Kate," he says her name in a desperate plead, her name whispered as a secret only for her to hear. With a soft curled finger to her chin, her gaze now meeting his, and he can see the single tear sliding down her freckled cheek. He wipes at it gently with his thumb and pulls her against him, her head falling onto his shoulder and he wraps his arms around her.

_Some memories fail to move on to this lifetime, but others never fade away, and he knows it is time he tells her what it was really like._

He takes in a deep breath and closes his eyes. He doesn't just remember it. He can feel it happening again.

_Dying is something that is hard to forget._

"It did hurt, the stab wound, I mean, but…

_It should have hurt more. He was bleeding out from it, life leaving his body with every drop. But he knew he was dying, so how it was happening did not matter any more. There aren't any regrets or disappointments at that moment, not when the sky above ripples with the sound of the airplane engines as it soars above, carrying the only thing that matters to in the world, taking her home, taking her to where she could live her life, safe from the island and free of its darkness for the rest of her life…_

And when I saw the plane," he says with a smile, "none of what I was feeling mattered anymore because I knew you were safe, that you were going home. After all I had done to you, that could be my only redemption. And then, it started happening, I started shifting between that world and this and…

_As he takes one of his last strangled gasps for air, he sees her face, smiling, beaming, at him, and all that is left to feel is absolute, unadulterated bliss. His hand presses against the wound, he knows blood seeps through his fingers, but what he feels is not the sticky warm life gushing out of him, but her soft, smooth fingers, intertwining with his, as they sit next to each other, pressed against one another, ready to take the next step. Ready to go home…_

…I knew you were waiting for me, I knew about this place and what was waiting for me on the other side. _You."_

He kisses the side of her head, rocking her gently as he speaks, "so, to answer your question, no, it didn't hurt."

She sobs against his chest, her tears leaving a wet streak against hi skin.

_Yes it did. It did hurt. The pain might not have been his to feel, but she felt it. Every day. It hurt everyday to wake up without him, to go through her days without seeing him, without talking to him. It hurt to go to bed every night, to her cold empty bed, without his arms wrapped around her, without him whispering 'I love you' as her body succumbed to sleep._

_Sometimes it hurts to die, sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes it hurts to just stay alive._


End file.
